When documents are created, many decisions must be made as to style, content, layout, and the like. The text, images, and graphics must be organized and laid out in a two-dimensional format with the intention of providing a presentation to the viewer which will capture and preferably maintain their attention for the time sufficient to get the intended message across. Different style options are available for the various content elements and choices must be made. The best choices for style and layout depend upon content, intent, viewer interests, etc. In order to tell if a set of choices made as to the look and feel of the final version of the document were good or bad, one might request feedback from a set of viewers after viewing the document and compile the feedback into something meaningful from which the document's creators or developers can make alterations, changes, or other improvements. This cycle repeats until the document's owners are satisfied that the final version achieves the intended result.
Factors that contribute to the quality and effectiveness of layout and style decisions for a document are the handling of groups of content elements as style and layout choices affect groups of content. A group is a collection of content elements. Group membership is a property of the logical structure of the document. The neighborhood of groups can be considered a layout property. While layout structure often matches the logical structure, there is no requirement that it do so.
Preferably, one would like to have a quantitative measure of various value properties of the document (measures of the document “goodness”) based on properties inherent in the document itself. In this manner the document itself provides a level of quantitative feedback. For instance, one property that developers would like to be able to measure would be how easy it is to use a document. A measure for the ease of use of a document can be used in evaluating or making document design decisions.
One aspect of the ease of use of a document is one's ability to tell which elements belong to a group and which do not. The style and layout decisions that are made in the presentation of a document can affect the degree of group identity that it conveys. In evaluating a document's design for its ease of use, it is useful to have a measure of the degree of group identity. Considerations for ease-of-use with respect to groups include spatial coherence, spatial separation, alignment separation, heading separation, background separation, and/or style separation. Measures for various characteristics of content, feature, and the like could be weighted by intent, relevance, and other parameters and these could then be combined to obtain one or more overall measures for the document itself. If one had a method for evaluating properties inherent in the document itself then such a measure could be used during the document development process to help determine optimal presentation.
An aspect of the ease of use of a document is its searchability. Searchability can be defined as the degree to which the document structurally supports the finding of a desired content element. A document with high searchability provides aids that help in finding desired content. In general, a document with high searchability measure is easier to use because it is easy to locate the portion of the document containing the information of interest.
Another aspect of a document's ease of use is the document's degree of distinguishability. The distinguishability of content can be defined as the ability to identify one particular content element from another content element within the document. Distinguishability is important in establishing the context for the information disclosed by the element. It can reduce confusion about what that element is and to what group or setting it belongs. It can also aid in locating a desired element. The distinguishability of the document elements is therefore a contributing factor to the ease of use of the document.
Another property that would be desirable to be able to quantitatively measure is the ability of the document to hold the viewer's attention and interest. While much of the document's ease of use depends upon the actual content and its relevance to the viewer, there can also be a contribution from the style with which that content is presented. If a measure of the effect of style decisions on ease of use could be defined it could be used in determining a measure of optimal presentation.
Documents can present content in ways that make it easier to locate individual items. This can be referred to as ‘locatability’. A way to distinguish one content object from another object is to evaluate the target object's locatability, i.e., how easy it is to find an object within the document. This is a little different from distinguishability, which tells how well an item can be differentiated from its neighbors. Structural aids such as layout of tables or bullet lists help the document viewer to locate objects. Presenting content in a table allows its location to be identified by row or column. The presence of headings for the rows and columns can further increase the ease of locating items. Presenting content items in a list introduces an ordering that aids in locating them, and the use of list bullets or item numbers aids further. Separability and distinguishability contribute to the locatability of an object.
Measures for various aspects of content, features, and the like could be weighted by intent, relevance, and other parameters and these could then be combined to obtain one or more overall measures for the document itself. If one had a method for evaluating such properties inherent in the document itself then such a measure could be used during the document development process to help determine optimal presentation.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a methodology to measure the quality of a document in a quantifiable way. Moreover, it is desirable to provide a quantifiable measurement of quality which is useable in evaluating the document and improving its quality so as to add value to the information being conveyed through the document.